(Maire Clayton, Headline USA) Not only did former First Lady Michelle Obama’s new embarrassingly low numbers; it also managed to start a potential trademark war with a U.K. podcast of the same name.
The individuals behind the U.K.-based “In My Opinion” podcast took to TikTok Thursday to attempt to plea with Obama over her podcast sharing the same name of “IMO.”
“Obviously we are aware that you launched your podcast, and we don’t think you did it maliciously but we are three young black boys from London who started a podcast five years ago,” the trio began in their roughly minute and a half speech.
The three go on to state that the name is trademarked in the U.K., but they failed to file it in the United States.
“Since five years ago we’ve trademarked the name ‘In My Opinion’ and ‘IMO’ podcast. And we don’t want our work to be drowned by your celebrity status, do you know what I mean – you’re big, you’re powerful and you’ve got a big machine,” the group continued.
@inmyopinionpod MRS MICHELLE OBAMA‼️ Sorry to disturb your regular programming but it has come to our attention that the Forever First Lady of the United States of America Michelle Obama is launching a Podcast with her brother named the IMO Podcast @IMO Podcast, which of course is the same name we use. We need your support and need you guys to spam her comments and let her know we already own this Trademark in the UK and currently working on other jurisdictions. our Trademark is only registered in the UK because at the time we launched, we never believed in ourselves enough to think we’d grow to where we’re at to TradeMark in the US and we couldn’t afford it. And we’re not accusing Mrs Obama of infringement because she was well within her rights to trademark the podcast in the US. PLEASE SHARE ON YOUR STORIES AND SPAM Michelle Obama’s COMMENTS ON HER PODCAST PAGE @imopodcasts As always, we appreciate your support 🙏🏾 #fyp #imopodcast #imopodcasts #inmyopinionpodcast #fypage #foryou #inmyopinion #explorepage #viral2025 #xyzbcaaa #trending2025 #reacttothis #reacts #stitchthis #tiktokstory #storytimestiktok #storytime #storytimes #michelleobama ♬ original sound – IN MY OPINION PODCAST
They asked if Obama would reconsider changing the name as they didn’t want their years of effort to have gone to waste.
“So, we’re asking kindly, please share a thought for us three young black men that are just trying to make a better place,” they added. “We really hope you can reconsider the name you’ve chosen for your podcast as to not confuse our listeners and drown out our voice that we’ve worked so hard to build.”
They asked the former first lady if she would be willing to discuss the matter and come up with a solution to the problem.
The podcast, which Obama shares with her brother Craig Robinson, dropped Wednesday and has been ridiculed for its lackluster numbers.
As of the time of writing, the first episode only managed to get 192,000 views with the second taking a deep nosedive with only 81,000 views on YouTube. In addition, the account has only managed to get roughly 29,000 subscribers.
